The present invention relates to a one piece molded flexible drive shaft assembly. In particular, it relates to a low cost, noise free, shaft assembly for connecting and transmitting rotary motion between a drive input and a drive output, which are offset relative to one another. The shaft assembly further includes integrally molded therein coupling members at each end of the drive shaft core to connect the shaft drive input end and the shaft drive output end to a drive input and a drive output respectively.
While the present invention has utility in apparatus comprising various mechanical components, it has particular application and will henceforth be described with reference to electrostatographic reproducing apparatus. Briefly, and as illustrated in FIG. 6 in electrostatographic printing apparatus commonly in use today a photoconductive insulating surface 10 which is typically the surface of a rotatably drum is charged to a uniform potential by a charge corotron 12 and thereafter exposed to a light image of an original document 15 to be reproduced on an exposure platen 16 by means of exposure lamp 17, the exposure discharges on the photoconductive insulating surface in exposed or background areas creating an electrostatic latent image on the photoconductive insulating surface of which corresponds to the image areas contained within the document. A developer unit 20 has developer material to developed the electrostatic latent image. Typically, the developer material has charged carrier particles and charged toner particles which triboelectrically adhere to the carrier particles and during development, the toner particles are attracted from the carrier particles to the charged areas of the photoconductive insulating surface. The developed image on the photoconductive insulating layer is subsequently transferred at a transfer station 24 to a support surface, such as copy paper 21, which is fed by feeder 22 to provide intimate transfer contact between the insulating area and the copy paper. The toner image on the copy paper is subsequently, permanently affixed on the copy paper by the application of heat and/or pressure in a fuser 23. Subsequent to the transfer of the toner image to the support surface, any residual toner remaining on the photoconductor is cleaned in a cleaner 24 in preparation for the next imaging cycle.
Alternatively, the electrostatic latent image may be generated from information electronically stored or generated in digital form which afterwards may be converted to alphanumeric images by image generation, electronics and optics. For further information on such apparatus, attention is directed to U.S. Pat. No. 4,372,668 to Malachowski et al., and U.S. Pat. No. 4,660,963 to Stemmle et al.
In these machines shafts are typically used to provide a variety of features, performing functions within the machines. Further, it is not unusual to have to provide a drive connection between two angularly and linearly offset shafts.